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07/23/2004 Archived Entry: "Live at Cab’s: David Diaz Talks on Current Fighters, Training, Career and the State of Boxing!"
Live at Cab’s: David Diaz Talks on Current Fighters, Training, Career and the State of Boxing!
By Juan C. Ayllon
(Glenn Ellyn, Illinois): At first glance, the two appeared to be just another beautiful young couple taking in the sumptuous International fare and ambiance of the long and open room. Both Latin, he sported several day’s beard growth, was chiseled and angular, while she had long curly dark brown hair, was very pretty and voluptuous. The mood was festive as people chatted affably around them at white clothed tables and about the long and ornate, well stocked bar with a polished sheet aluminum surface. The high, yellow ochre walls were neatly dotted with black and white photographs in black steel frames, original paintings and prints in single file and highlighted by tiny designer lights suspended via steel cable from an antique gray tin ceiling about the periphery of the restaurant.
The man was former Olympian and currently undefeated junior welterweight boxer, David Diaz (24-0-0, 13 knockouts); the lady was his lovely wife, Tanya Diaz. The place was the chic Cab’s Wine bar and Bistro in the quaint and upscale downtown of Glenn Ellyn, Illinois.
Having just celebrated their one-year anniversary in June, the two clearly enjoyed each other’s company and were very much in love. The couple shared an upbeat sense of humor and a love for video rentals. In between bouts, they had roughly a three-week window of opportunity to enjoy the nightlife. This evening fell into that category.
David and Tanya Diaz enjoying their night out at Cab's
In a few days, it would be back to the relatively Spartan boxing lifestyle. However, Tanya loved boxing and wholeheartedly supported her man’s career, even printing out online boxing articles for him from sites like the Cyber Boxing Zone on a regular basis. She also looked forward to his training and diet regimen, as it helped maintain her figure with its strict salads and chicken diet.
An Olympian boxer for the U.S. in the games held in Atlanta, GA in 1996, David Diaz had been boxing since age nine and was just now, at the age of 28, on the cusp of making a move to world honors. Having beaten perennial contender, Emmanuel Augustus this past winter and stopped former world champion Ener Julio this last spring, Diaz looked to breaking into the upper echelons of boxing in the next year or two.
Diaz (L) attacks Augustus...
Thus, over a sublime calamari atop mashed potatoes appetizer, a savory beef tenderloin entrée, some of his wife’s potato frites and healthy samplings from a bountiful desert tray, Diaz spoke at length with this writer about his career and the current state of boxing.
Juan Ayllon: For starters, what do you think about former lightweight champion Paul Spadafora moving up to the junior welterweight class?
...and stops Ener Julio!
David Diaz: Well, I think it’s good for the weight class. I mean, here’s a guy that’s 135, he was a champion at that weight and now he’s trying to step into the ‘40’s, which he’s going to have a slighter edge over some of the guys that are trying to come up. But, it’s good for the division—except that it gets crowded—and more people want to see these fights take place. It will be good for the fighters because, not only is there recognition, but they’re going to get obviously paid more for it, fighting against such fighters. So, I think it’s very good for the division.
JA: After your last fight, you were thinking about fighting at lightweight [135 pound weight limit], as well as junior welterweight [140 pound weight limit]. Can you elaborate on that?
DD: Yeah, well, my last fight, I fought at unofficially 137, while officially on the scale, I was 139 with some clothing on, so I wanted that fight at 137. There is a possibility of going down to 135 and seeing if I can get a title shot and also a possibility of me staying at 140 and trying to become a champion at 140 as well. So, the options, I’m going to try to leave them open; whichever one I can get a title shot the quickest, I would jump on. Right now, I’m walking around at about 158. With a little running, I'll get down there in no time!
JA: Now, you’d mentioned before that your management was looking at specific offers but you wouldn’t—and couldn’t—elaborate on that. Do you have any more information now?
DD: No, well right now, it’s still the same way. I can’t elaborate on either of them, but there’s some good prospects in it, commercial wise, and hopefully we’ll be able to get it resolved within the next two to three weeks and see where we can take it from there.
JA: So, you’re looking at a definite time line in the next month or two setting something up?
DD: Yeah, definitely, because I feel that I’ve done what I could by myself with my managers as far as like getting close to a title shot. I doubt I’ll ever get a title shot without having a [major] promoter, so my main focus is to get a promoter behind me and help him move me along to a title shot.
JA: So, you’re talking about someone above and beyond Chicago promoter, Dominic Pesoli?
DD: Right, exactly: Dominic Pesoli has been a good friend and has helped me out with my career, with boxing. Coming back to fight [after a two year layoff], he’s given me my fights here in Chicago—all of them—and he’s given me great fighters to fight with and I thank him a lot for helping me out. But, Dominic’s not my promoter and we’re gonna see if we can get someone else to move me along.
JA: If you could pick a prospective ‘hit list,’ which fighters would you choose to match up with?
DD: Definitely, it would be a Hatton, Bojado, [and] Muhammad Abdulaev. You know, even if I could go down to the lightweights, I’d fight Julio Diaz or anybody—Javier Jauregui, the one who lost the title to him—who’s in that respective weight class.
I would also love to fight the guy I lost to in the Olympics, Oktay Urkal. He’s a German. I thought I won that fight, but, you know, I would love to fight him in the pros. Definitely, that’s a target for me. I really want to do it. I’ll even go to Germany and fight him, see what happens. 
Calling all contenders: Diaz wants you in the ring!
So, my respective ‘hit list’ is anybody who wants to walk into the ring with me. My preference would be junior welterweight, but like I said, if the chance comes at lightweight, I’ll do it.
JA: It seems that lately, you’ve been having a harder time putting away some of these guys. Is it that these guys are really strong jawed or is something else going on?
DD: Well, this last fight, this guy was just a strong fighter and he could take punishment; nobody had knocked him down, nobody has ever stopped him. I felt that if it would have gone two more rounds, I would have stopped the guy because it looked like he was getting ready to go. Again, I feel my power’s there, it’s just that I haven’t been able to catch him right and put him away. But, I know my power’s there and, I mean, some fights you can knock the guys out and some fights you can’t. Unfortunately for me, this last fight, I couldn’t. We’ll take them like that, we’ll take them as they come; a win’s a win!
JA: You said that this year is the year that you really want to make a move. Do you have a more refined timeline since we talked about it previously, like what you’d like to do in two years, five years?
DD: In two to four years, I want to be up there with champions fighting and making the money that champions make and maybe five years down the road, I’ll be retired! [Laughs]. Who knows? Depending on how these two, three years pan out for me, it’ll be my decision on whether how far I stay in the game.
JA: In watching you, I’ve noticed that you seem to have really solid fundamentals. Would you consider once you retire from boxing becoming a trainer, a manager or something along those lines?
DD: Yeah, I would definitely like to do that. I mean I would definitely want to do that because that would be my giving back what boxing has given to me. And that’s not necessarily in the pro ranks, but in the amateurs: I’ll help along little kids and help them have self defense and just fall in love with the sport of boxing. That can or may not bring you acclaims to the Olympics, to world titles, you know, I just want to be someone that helps out, that’s all.
JA: Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about boxing being in the doldrums. What’s your take on that?
DD: It kind of is, but it’s not on the boxers. It’s on the people that are judging and governing of each local boxing [jurisdiction]. I mean, we have to get some competent people in there that really know boxing that have done amateur fights going into the pros. You see what happened to Emmanuel Augustus in the Courtney Burton fight [Editor’s note: Courtney Burton won a controversial and hotly disputed decision over Augustus recently]. He clearly won that fight and they just had some incompetent judges that didn’t know what to do or they probably didn’t see the fight as it really is, but it was clearly stated that Emmanuel Augustus won that fight and I feel that if we could change that stuff from the way down, from the bottom, work our way up, I think that boxing would become a very great sport again.
JA: Now, clearly, there’s going to be some bias, but it seems that the excitement in boxing is currently in the lower weight divisions. Could you tell us your thoughts on that?
DD: Well, see it’s not bias, it’s because it’s always been that way. I mean, it’s always been that way. The lighter weights have always given the best fights. Always. Alexis Arguello, Sugar Ray Leonard—who fought in the ‘40s. Julio Caesar Chavez, Hector Camacho, Sr., you’ve got all these other fighters that were in the low weight divisions, Golatin (?) Gonzales, even at the 106, like Chiquito Gonzales, Ricardo Lopez! These were unbelievable fighters I mean, that not only gave you that one punch knockout, but gave you a war throughout the first to the 12th rounds.
Diaz feels that the lower weight classes have always been the most exciting!
You don’t see that in the heavyweights. That’s why I don’t see why people get so wrapped up about the heavyweights when it’s just a ‘one punch’; it’s not even a fight! You understand what I’m saying? It could be two, three rounds and these are all hanging all over each other.
When you go to the lighter weights, you’ve got guys that are moving, sticking, punching, their heads going back, really giving their hard blows and yet, we don’t get that recognition. I say ‘we’ because I’m in a lighter weight division, but they don’t get the recognition that we’re supposed to, because we are an exciting division. We are exciting fighters.
That’s what boxing is. It’s not just go in there and punch one guy and knock them out. I mean, if you can do that, all power to you, you know. You’re obviously going to get paid a lot, but a lot of people really like to see the fights, even if they go to 12 rounds to be exciting fights.
Not to mention a very exciting fighter, Arturo Gatti. People like that go and see Arturo Gatti fight because he gives it his all. He gives it all in the fight. And that’s why I think that the heavyweights are overrated. You know, especially some of the heavyweights now that are not…producing like heavyweights are supposed to. That’s just me; that’s just my opinion.
JA: I want to name some names and get your opinion on each. For starters, I give you Kermit Cintron.
DD: He showed his great power this last fight. But, he surely got tired! Had Teddy Reid been a little…tougher, he probably would have out-punched Kermit because he got tired. Don’t get me wrong: Kermit’s a hard puncher and, I’m pretty sure, a big 147. But, maybe coming down in weight that much had a lot to do with it. You know what I’m saying? So, I really don’t know. What I see from that fight was that Kermit looked a little tired.
Wow! [To his wife’s laughter, he gawked at the ornate desert tray being set in front of him] It’s just that he looked tired to me.
But like I told you before, when you’re in a title fight, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you came out with the belt, and that’s what Kermit did. So, really, he can go back and work at it, but he’s going to work at it now as a champion. He’s going to be looking at it like, “they’re going to try to take this away from me, I dig it.” So now, if he says to himself, “I did kind of get tired, I wasted my punches, I threw too hard to try to knock him out too early and that got me tired and made me look a little sloppy, a little tired,” maybe his next fight he’ll be more aware of that and execute a lot better.
JA: How about Vivian Harris and Ricky Hatton?
DD: Well, I’ve only seen Hatton fight once. He’s an all-out fighter, comes at you, rushes you and body puncher. Actually, the absolute truth, I haven’t seen Vivian Harris fight. So, it would be kind of hard for me to comment on that. If Vivian Harris can outbox him, then I’m pretty sure he’s going to beat him.
JA: What do you think of Kostya Tsyzu and the way he was treated when he was stripped of his title?
DD: I mean it was unfortunate because he is such a great fighter and everything, but he hasn’t fought in a long time. And, you need to understand that a lot of fighters who are not champions are sort of ‘interim champions’ and if a champion is not fighting, then he should get stripped. I mean, there’s no other way to do that. You should get stripped and the one who’s champion or somebody fight for that title because if he’s not defending it, then what good does it serve to just hold it on the shelf and let nobody go after it? That’s like saying, “We’re going to play the ‘Super Bowl’—everybody’s going to play the playoffs, but nobody’s going to play the ‘Super Bowl.” You understand what I’m saying? So, it doesn’t fit right. So, what had to happen happened and he got stripped of a belt and so now Vivian Harris is WBA Champion.
And this shouldn’t be ‘Champion of the World-Elourdes' [?] or whatever. It should just be one champion of one belt, and that’s it.
JA: What was your reaction to Roy Jones, Jr. and Antonio Tarver?
DD: I was like, ‘Wow’; I was surprised. I actually thought Jones was gonna really beat him. I thought Roy Jones was going to really beat him and just box him and bully him around and when he [Tarver] caught Roy, I was shocked. So, what can you say about it? Can you say it was a ‘lucky punch’? Maybe. But, it probably wasn’t, because Tarver probably did his homework and studied Roy Jones as much as he could and he did what he had to do and he came out with the win. So, that’s all I can say about that.
Tanya Diaz interjects: By the way, don’t take this the wrong way, but if you talk to David the week before a fight, he’s not very friendly then. He’s very focused. All our friends don’t call then. I’ve found this out the hard way. If you try to be ‘nicy-nicy’ with him then, it doesn’t work. For instance, if I try to take his hand then, he’s like, ‘hey, leave me alone.’
DD: Yeah, I’m just thinking a lot about the fight, think about what I’m going to do, how I’ve got to do it and it just goes over my head. I start preparing myself really mentally. So, it’s like I try not to be a soft person, try not to be nice, it’s just that I get that frustration or—I guess—anger and everything and I don’t even take a hug from my wife.
JA: In the past, fighters would take a ‘vow of celibacy’ before a fight. Is that the case with you, too?
DD: Oh, definitely! Definitely, I’m ‘Old School.’ I feel I’m ‘Old School’ and you definitely have to do that. It’s your strength and it keeps your legs fresh, so don’t—all the future fighters that are going to read this—don’t do it, ‘cause you’ll end up on the wrong side; you’ll end up on the canvas. Just try to avoid it, stick to the rules of the game and it’s a discipline. That’s where a lot of fighters make it and a lot don’t because they’re not disciplined. The ones that do are successful.
[Commenting on the desert before him] This is really good! I’m going to have to start running tomorrow definitely!
JA: How far do you run?
DD: It’s a secret. [Laughs]. No, I try to run anywhere—when I first start off—from like three to four miles, the first couple of days, the first week, then I start picking it up gradually. And then I go five or six, seven. There’s times that I’ve run on Sundays up to eight miles, then just to do nothing the rest of the day, just to relax. There’s days that you’ve got to have some rest days. I don’t particularly pick the day that I rest. Let’s say for example if I start out Monday, I ran two days and then on Wednesday I decided to rest. So then I just make sure the next time I run three days straight and then I put in a rest day. Or, then I run two days straight, put in a rest day, then do three. You know, so like that, it’s always mixing it up. You’re not always stuck to that mentality of, ‘Oh, I got to go through this, I gotta do that.’ So, it’s a lot easier to run.
JA: So, you incorporate a sort of instinctive approach to training?
DD: Yeah, I just go with the flow at times.
JA: Are you still lifting weights?
DD: I do some weights, not a lot of weights. I’m actually going to start again. For my last two fights, I did not lift weights at all. I did no weight training whatsoever. But, for my next fight, I’m going to do some weight training.
JA: Where do you see boxing going in the next several years?
DD: Oh, when I become champion, it’ll be going pretty good! [Laughs]. I feel boxing, it’s got only one way to go and that’s up. Right now, they say boxing’s on the downside, but it’ll come up. There’s going to be that person to spike it up again and I definitely feel that I can do that and you guys are just going to have to wait and see.
JA: Unfortunately, because of the past antics of Mike Tyson and several other fighters, boxing has kind of a bad image. However, I think you are an example of how you can be a good fighter and yet, still be a good person. Can you comment on this as far as your experience with other fighters?
DD: Well, that is true. I mean, most of the fighters are good people, man. They’re just thought of as ‘rough necks’ and bad guys because the sport is brutal. I mean, you try to go in there and you try to pound somebody’s head in. So, obviously, they think you’re a bad guy or whatever. But, the majority of the fighters, they’re really good, easy people to get along with and there’s a lot of them. It’s not just me. There’s a lot of fighters out there that are really, really good people and that are so easy to talk to. It just so happens that if you press the wrong button, somebody’s going to get pissed. And, so that’s not just meaning the fighter, that’s just anybody in general. So, you walk up to somebody you just catch on the street, you tell that person something that they don’t want to hear that doesn’t fit well with them, well, they’re going to get aggravated, just like a fighter would, too. I mean, all in all, I think that fighters are really good people and there’s more good that outweigh the bad.
JA: You recently won a special award, did you not? Tell us about this.
DD: Oh, yeah, it was called the “Muhammad Ali Award.” It was given out by the F.K. Sports Program. And, Ed Kelly used to run the Chicago Park Districts a while back and he’s the one who started off the boxing program here in Chicago. So, it was a very great honor to receive—I was the first recipient of the Muhammad Ali award. I was humbled and honored by it and it was very special, especially knowing that you know a person like Ed Kelly came up and told me that I was going to be the recipient of the Muhammad Ali Award. It was really nice and a real honor to be the first. It was really cool.
JA: On a personal note, you just celebrated your first year anniversary. Do you plan on having kids anytime soon?
[Tanya and David Diaz both laugh].
DD: Well, I don’t know yet! That’s still in the ‘working department.’ So, we’ve got to evaluate everything and see how my career goes and then we’ll talk about having a bunch of Diazes running around or something like that! But, right now, we’re not planning on it. We’ll see what happens. I’m looking forward to it, but not right now!
David Diaz poses with Cab's Winebar and Bistro owner, Luis Ayllon
Photos at Cab’s Winebar and Bistro courtesy of Juan C. Ayllon
Photos of Diaz-Augustus and Diaz-Julio courtesy Edward Zajac
For additional pictures, see the album entitled, “Diaz at Cabs” at the link below:
http://photos.yahoo.com/juancayllon
